Market Place

Digital Access

Home Delivery

Local news, prep sports, Chicago sports, local and regional entertainment, business, home and lifestyle, food, classified and more! News you use every day! Daily, Daily including the e-Edition or e-Edition only.

Text Alerts

Choose your news! Select the text alerts you want to receive: breaking news, prep sports scores, school closings, weather, and more. Text alerts are a free service from SaukValley.com, but text rates may apply.

Religion seen as a guiding, uniting force

When it is proposed that God did not found this country, but man did, that would be true.

After all, I have not seen God out using a shovel or axe or in our Legislature writing laws.

I would offer that religion has been a guiding force in the development of our country and laws.

The fact that we do not function in a survival-of-the-fittest mode can be attributed to using the moral guides of the biblical statement of the Ten Commandments. The basis of our Founding Fathers’ thinking was formed in the belief that men should be free to run their own lives.

That belief was held together with the help of religion as a unifier, a moral guide, a support to break away from the tyrannical rule of England – a rallying point, if you will.

Religion has given many people the courage to step up and do what others would not.

Religion helped form our original Constitution, helped free the slaves, and has helped our fighting forces muster courage in conflict.

Even the Rev. Martin Luther King used religion as the great uniting force to catapult the civil rights movement. Religion is the force that allows for compassion for the weak, the sick and the elderly.

Yes, without using religion as a guide, our lives would be different. Can you say that difference would be better? While you do not have to profess God, it cannot be said that religion did not help found this country.

We will soon see what effect the exclusion or expulsion of religion has on our future.